Many user interfaces and computer applications incorporate animation to provide a robust user experience. However, animating objects may be stressful on computing systems, which may cause slowdowns and jerky animation due to over consumption of system resources (e.g., a rendering system and/or an application may be overburdened due to a lack of available resources needed to produce smooth rendering of animation frames). In order to balance a smooth consistent frame rate, current application programmer interfaces (APIs) may provide timing mechanisms that notify an application when it is time to render an animation frame. Unfortunately, current APIs may not take into account overall rendering system performance, application performance, and other system environmental factors when deciding how frequently to notify the application.